Post navigation

As you can see above, petty shoplifting cases in Dallas plummeted on the day police implemented a new policy making it harder for shopkeepers to report them.

But Dallas police Chief David Brown says that good police work, not the policy change, led to the drop. He said his department’s new crackdown on “fences” — people who buy and sell stolen goods — drove shoplifting lower.

It costs Dallas 29 cents per mile to operate its fleet of police vehicles.

It costs Phoenix only 20 cents per mile.

Why the 9-cent difference? Dallas officials don’t know, but they’re working to figure it out.

“We’re curious to find out if we really could make up 9 cents per mile or if there’s something different between our operations,” Assistant City Manager Forest Turner during a City Council briefing Wednesday about the city’s vehicle fleet.

For more than a year, city officials have been working to overhaul management of the city’s entire 5,100-unit inventory of police cars, garbage trucks, code inspector cars and other equipment.

Officials say they are at the midpoint, and still don’t have many of the answers. City Manager Mary Suhm told the council that a tight budget has restrained progress, but they are moving forward.

“This is going a little slower than I would like,” she said. “But I want you to see where we are and some of the data we’ve gathered.”